The North Korea Travel Ban Will Do More Harm Than Good

By Christine Ahn

Aug. 2, 2017

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A tourist taking a selfie during a visit to a subway station in Pyongyang, North Korea, this month.CreditEd Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea tested two long-range missiles last month, demonstrating that it may be able to reach American soil with a nuclear weapon. Tensions between Washington and Pyongyang are at a high point.

In this atmosphere, multiple barriers — language, culture and ideology — make misunderstanding and dangerous miscalculations more likely, paving the way for conflict. We need more contact and communication among the people of North Korea, South Korea and the United States — not less.

But the United States government is barring Americans from traveling to North Korea. The ban was put in place by the Trump administration following the death in June of Otto Warmbier, the American college student who had been detained in North Korea for more than a year and died after returning home in a coma.

With the exception of humanitarian aid initiatives, citizen efforts will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, meaning that the travel ban is likely to end people-to-people engagement. Americans traveling to North Korea in search of their family members, dead and alive, are likely to be banned. Draconian United States and United Nations Security Council sanctions make it very difficult for Korean-Americans to send money to their impoverished relatives in the North, but the travel ban will probably cut off those channels, too.

Two years ago, I crossed the world’s most fortified border, from North to South Korea, with 30 women from 15 countries calling for a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War, which was halted six decades ago with only a cease-fire. The North Korea travel ban will impede citizen diplomacy initiatives like our march.

From the “Ping-Pong diplomacy” of Chinese and American table tennis players in the 1970s that opened the door between Beijing and Washington to the people-to-people exchanges between the United States and the Soviet Union that helped thaw relations during the Cold War, citizen diplomacy fosters understanding between countries otherwise closed off to each other.

During the Vietnam War, American citizens traveled regularly to North Vietnam transporting letters to captured American soldiers from their families. These peace activists also established links to get care packages to American prisoners, and even helped bring home some captured pilots.

Citizen diplomacy initiatives like these are vital to fostering understanding and building trust between the isolated North Koreans and the outside world. Humanitarian organizations, like Handicap International, have spent decades assisting people with disabilities throughout North Korea, facilitating North Korean government action.

The United States’ ban on travel to North Korea not only violates common sense but also goes against the 2014 United Nations Commission of Inquiry report on North Korean human rights, which recommends that “states and civil society organizations should foster opportunities for people-to-people dialogue and contact.” And the ban will reinforce North Korea’s policy of isolating its citizens from interaction with the West, especially Americans. Some 1,000 Americans visit North Korea each year.

Changes in South Korea offer some hope. President Moon Jae-in, who took office in May, has committed to reconciling with North Korea, declaring in July, “I am ready to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at any time and any place.”

Last month, as I checked in for a flight to Seoul from San Francisco, I was informed that I couldn’t enter South Korea. The government of former South Korean President Park Geun-hye, a hawk on North Korea, had placed me on a list of banned travelers, apparently as retribution for my activism, including the D.M.Z. crossing. But within a few days, it was reversed by the Moon administration, following enormous public outcry, and I traveled to Seoul.

While the motivation behind the United States’ ban on travel to North Korea is understandable — no one wants to see another American suffer like Otto Warmbier — it is counterproductive to the broader objective of securing peace in the region. Peace is achieved by building bridges between people and increasing trust. With no official channels of communication, closing the door on citizen engagement shuts down prospects for diplomacy.

Christine Ahn is the coordinator of Women Cross DMZ, an organization of women mobilizing for peace in Korea.